Mitred Parakeet (Psittacara mitratus) — Vorstman's Guide to the Birds of North America

Voice

A sustained, loud, grating screech in flight, mixed with nasal, squeaky notes. A flock passing overhead can be heard from a distance; perched in a tree the calls become shorter and less frequent.

Listen: Flight callXC931278

Recording: Jorge Leitão — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Ponta do Altar, Ferragudo, Lagoa, Faro District, Portugal · xeno-canto

Identification

Mostly green, with a red forehead and a variable amount of red around and in front of the eye that in some birds extends well onto the cheeks. Bare white skin surrounds the eye, and the bill is horn-coloured. Young birds show barely any red. The amount of red varies strongly between individuals and is not a strict age or sex mark.

Confusion species

Red-masked Parakeet (Psittacara erythrogenys) has an almost entirely red head rather than a variable amount of red around the eye, and can be told at close range by the red on its thighs and bend of the wing and the more extensive red on the underwing coverts. Nanday Parakeet has a black facial mask and a black bill, with no red at all. Red-crowned and Lilac-crowned Amazon are clearly larger and stockier, with a short tail instead of a long one.

Habitat

Montane forest, cloud forest and scrub between 1,000 and 3,400 metres in its native range. In this region mainly suburbs and cities with tall trees in California and Florida.

Where the bird is most often found, arranged by the USNVC — the vegetation classification of the United States and Canada — and CMECS for sea and coast.

Range and movements

Its original range lies in the Andes of Peru (Ayacucho and Cuzco), Bolivia and Argentina, south to Córdoba province; that falls outside this map. In North America it is naturalised from escaped cage birds: California held about a thousand birds in 2002, Florida at least four hundred by 2019, and a smaller group in Hawaii has been reduced by control measures from about two hundred to some thirty birds. Smaller, introduced groups have also been reported from Mexico. It does not migrate: the birds stay in the same area all year.

Resident
Winter
dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

The map is a density field, not a drawn range boundary: it is built from the records themselves and therefore does not follow state or national borders. Both the seasonal colour and the depth of colour come, cell by cell, from the records of GBIF (2006–2026), counted per 0,7° cell and divided by all bird records in that same cell, so that the density of birdwatchers does not count. Every cell is counted separately for June–July, December–January and the migration months, and takes the colour of the season that wins there; a cell is only called summer or winter where the other season is nearly empty. Country outlines: Natural Earth (public domain). This species occupies a small area; the map is zoomed in on it.

Where and when to look

Watch how much red a bird carries on the head: in Mitred Parakeet this varies strongly between individuals in the same flock, while the related Red-masked Parakeet nearly always shows an evenly red head. A flock passing overhead screeching gives the best chance to compare several birds at once.

Conservation

The species is listed as Least Concern (LC) worldwide, with a stable population across much of the Andes. The naturalised populations in this region are increasing, except in Hawaii, where targeted control measures have reduced numbers.

Scientific name

Psittacara mitratus | (Tschudi, 1844)

Von Tschudi described the species in 1844; because it was later moved to another genus, author and year stand in parentheses. The genus Psittacara was introduced by Vigors in 1825; the name derives from Latin psittacus, 'parrot'. mitratus is Latin for 'wearing a mitre', after the red head colour, which suggests a bishop's headdress.